I love the ocean and even have a masthead* to prove it. An extension of my love for the ocean is my love for the beaches. I sometimes get a feeling that the main reason of this unexplained pull towards the sun and sand is the deprived childhood. Now, do not get me wrong. I had a wonderful childhood – the kind that was full of loving parents with enough money to school me, buy me Barbie dolls, fairytale books, and candy. However, my childhood was deprived in the sense that it was mostly spent in the hills or in tropical areas. Even when I grew up and began to travel on my own, I usually ended up in places that were not surrounded by water. Hence, beach-deprivation continued. So the lone trip to Mumbai where I got to walk on the filthy and highly commercialized Juhu beach remained a sweet memory for a very long time. And when my fiancé brought up the subject of honeymoon (Err…or was it that I never gave him time to bring it up? Maybe I was announcing my choices the minute somebody whispered the M word!), my only condition was “by the sea.” Being a darling that he is, he decided to take me on the sea rather than just by it and won brownie points that shall last him until eternity. And so continued my love affair with the ocean.
Now, that the universe has conspired to make me live on an island, for the last three months I have been living in a joyful delusion that I am surrounded by lavish beaches, white sand, and frothy ocean waves. It was always about finding half-a-day free to visit a beach. This Saturday, we found half-a-day for ourselves and now I am back to the real world.
Let me give you a quick lesson in geography of Singapore. I happen to be living in the North-West of the island and the beach we decided to hit is called the East Coast Park (ECP), which obviously is in the East or rather, South-East of the island. Basically, we traversed the entire island, or the country if you will, to go to the beach. (I remember I once had a cab driver in tears when I asked him to take me home from the ECP. He laughed hysterically and then cribbed all through the way.)
ECP is a happy place with lots to do. It has an array of lively restaurants, a few colorful shops selling you the kind of things you may need at the beach and the kind you may never need anywhere. There are also many stores for bicycles and skates on hire. And if you are a water sport-enthusiast, you have several adventurous options too. The lazy ones fish at the Bedok jetty, or just sleep in their tiny camping tents. Most people walk, skate, or bicycle; some make sand castles and some barbeque in the pits. The only thing conspicuously missing from this cheery place is the sandy beach from where you can see ocean until the end of the world. Instead, what you see is ocean waves lapping onto the muddy/sandy artificial track and ugly ships as far as your sight allows.
On second thoughts, I should have known this! Singapore is one of the biggest ports of Asia and it is a tiny country that is partially built on reclaimed land. But of course its artificial beaches are surrounded by ships. However, once I got over the initial disappointment of being on a fake beach and trained my eyes not to look twenty meters beyond the beach, I had fun cycling around on a twin-cycle and feeling the ocean breeze in my hair.
So, I would still highly recommend ECP to anyone who is in Singapore for more than a week and will rate it higher than the artificial beaches of the Sentosa island, which are primarily built for the tourists and have precious little to offer in comparison with the free fun at the ECP.
*The picture used in the masthead was taken from the Singapore Eye (the observation wheel) and shows the reservoir where the Singapore River meets the ocean.
